Store and forward message systems are commonly used for many applications, for example, electronic mail. Commercially available store and forward software applications include Message Queue Server from Microsoft Corporation of Redmond, Washington and the MQSeries of products available from International Business Machines of Armonk, N.Y.
These store and forward applications typically operate by an application that is sending a message establishing a connection with a server or other device that is to receive the message. These types of store and forward applications require substantial network, disk and memory resources. One reasons that the network, disk and memory resources are consumed by store and forward applications is that a complete application program interface (API) is included in each application that provides store and forward functionality.
The store and forward application API is typically a full-function API that provides a specific method prescribed by a computer operating system or by another application program by which a programmer writing an application program can make requests of the operating system or another application. The full-function API allows an application to provide store and forward functionality. However, in some situations a full-function store and forward API requires an unnecessarily large portion of available resources.